panchali: second half
the rest.
Panchali
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Rei had expected to feel shame and regret where her sister Senshi and Queen were concerned, but instead she feels only relief. Her longing - no more than an insubstantial thought, one that she had not borne out to completion. Once Jadeite gave her wish substance, confronted her with his flesh-and-blood answer to her curiosity, she'd found it fled, replaced by an overwhelming desire for his familiar touch. And he was right all along - it had really never been about some secret ardor for her King and his guardians. They had merely given powerful voice to Rei's craving for the unexpected, for the forked path, for choices equal to her stature. There is nothing in these other men to attract her, as great as they are. She knows now that she is not in danger of betraying her sisters or her lover.
He was right. But of course, Jadeite always had surprised her.
Jadeite had heard her unspoken need, pushed her to speak it, made it his own and delivered it. He had been the architect, but she had been the dreamer, and neither of them had thought through the consequences of creating her fantasy.
If Rei now feels shame or regret, it is for letting her lover pain himself so deeply to please her, for infecting him with her own insidious restlessness. Maybe her temptation had been truly wrong, maybe it had only been natural, maybe both - but should they have manipulated his magic to bring it to vigorous life? Tested their limits, only to lick their wounds when they inevitably crossed them? Rei does not know if his doubts surfaced before their strange night together - she doesn't think Jadeite capable of hiding his feelings from her so effectively, but then, he is the master of disguises - or if he'd only suffered in the harsh morning light, after everything that had passed between them. It doesn't matter; she was and is the cause.
…
Makoto ushers her into her living room without a word, taking Rei's hand in her own warm one and leading her to an overstuffed loveseat. The familiar smells of peppery olive oil and dried roses comfort her, allow her to take small sips of the chardonnay Makoto offers. It tastes like dishwater to Rei, and the redhead watches her closely. But she patiently waits for her friend to speak first, a consideration for which Rei is grateful, and probably has never offered anyone herself. It is why she comes to Makoto, and not any of the others.
She cannot tell Minako, her closest sister. Rei doesn't want the counsel of one nearly as impatient and headstrong as herself, for whom the Shitennou's commander holds such gripping mesmerism, the violent push and pull of magnet to metal. Nor does Rei desire Ami's advice; she suspects the Ice Senshi is as vulnerable to logical hesitation as she is to her own spiritual dubiety, though their insecurities manifest themselves differently. Despite - perhaps, because of - their newfound happiness, neither the mythical guardians of love nor wisdom have really gotten used to finding equals to share their lives with, where they had expected eternal solitude. Usagi? No, love has always come easily to her optimistic Queen, in every life, she thinks fondly, and Rei would not wish it any other way. All the same, it means that Usagi could never understand.
And so, she seeks out someone who has awaited and received love patiently, unwaveringly, in a way that Rei can't seem to manage herself, despite millennia spent trying. Makoto never had doubts; she welcomed her beloved from ages past without indecision or interruption. If anyone could teach Rei steadfastness, it is the Senshi as enduring as the forest whose name she bears.
"I think you need something stronger," Makoto's unasked question gradually filters through her reverie. Her hostess fetches her a vodka on the rocks, and loosens her reticent friend's tongue.
Rei tells her. Not everything, of course - just that she and Jadeite had gotten caught up in her trivial fantasy, taken a harmless erotic charade too far. Not that she had looked into her King's midnight gaze and longed for midday sky - only that nothing had been the same between them since she'd introduced unnamed others into their bed.
She's not shy in the least about sex - many years and many stiff drinks with her fellow Senshi have cured even Ami (well, almost) of coyness - but Rei is glad she's sharing with Makoto, and not Minako or Usagi, both of whom might have been so spoiled for choice of which giggling innuendo to drop that they'd devolve into total incoherence. Even Makoto can't resist, a wicked spark to her bottle-glass irises as she tries to imagine just whose body Jadeite might have inhabited that night, other than the Fire Senshi's, of course.
"Kinky. I'm almost jealous. The stars knowing everything…" she shrugs dismissively. "Not many bedroom perks to that, I'm afraid."
"Knowing everything. I wouldn't wish that cross on anyone else."
Makoto sobers immediately. "I know you've felt…trapped…sometimes…"
"Not by him - never." Rei edgily twists her signet ring round her finger. The seal of Mars has represented the same vow in all of her incarnations - her promise to her sacred flames, to take no other master. "And anyway, the only thing the Fire's ever really known about him is the easiest - that he'd come. I just wanted - I don't know. Something out of the ordinary. Something I couldn't predict."
"Neph says the same thing," Makoto muses, smiling in apparent spite of her friend's predicament. "That divining the stars makes him restless."
Rei snorts inelegantly. "No, he says you're the only thing he's sure of, because the stars never know what batshit thing you'll do next."
Makoto turns that forested, knowing look on her, and Rei meets it squarely. "Don't say it. I know it now," and her words sound quietly in a quiet room. "That no Fire or stars can tell us anything about people we love. They'll always surprise us, no matter how well we know the future. No matter how well we know them. But I never really pictured being happy with someone, forever - I took oaths to escape marriage, not enter it."
"But you still took Jade for a lover, even when your duty demanded chastity. And now you push him away, too? Where is this road going to lead you?"
Rei stops short of replying, because it sounds so stark coming from her friend, but it's true. She's never given herself wholly to anyone or anything. What kind of sickness makes her wander forever, without a home?
She tries for nonchalance, but acid burns through instead, a caustic drip of conjecture. "I always saw him coming, but I never saw myself coping. Maybe that's why it's ending like this - maybe that's why I command flames, Mako. Because everything I hold onto - everything I touch turns to ashes."
"No," Makoto's voice is almost too gentle. "That's not how it works, Rei. You see things we don't, but the Fire only purges lies, disguises, deceptions. You, of all people, should know what the king of illusions wants."
"In the end, I only wanted him, too," Rei murmurs in sudden understanding. "Just him."
"You have to give something to get something."
"I've never known how to do that," she points out the obvious, dryly.
"Then learn." The tallest Senshi picks up their empty glasses. "I'm no Oracle, but there's no future for you both - if you can't learn to give more, and he can't learn to give less."
…
Jadeite had never been a hot-tempered or possessive man - but then, she had never given him cause. Now, Rei can see that he fears losing her - not really to any of his brothers, he's too arrogant for that particular insecurity - but to something more spectral. To a need for change and chance that he believes he can never satisfy, not with the steadiness of immortality stretching before them. If Rei was not so distraught, she would laugh at the irony of his misgivings - the famously unwed priestess, restless for amorous adventure, and the inveterate playboy of the Silver Millennium, seeking her hand above all others. But she cannot laugh, because she no longer wants anything more than to give Jadeite her hand. If the Fire had never spoken to her, and she'd had the freedom to decide, she would have chosen him. Forever. And now Rei fears that he does not trust her love, that he will not accept it - just when she understands herself able to unreservedly give it.
This is what it should be, and it took me three lifetimes to learn it, Rei thinks wonderingly. We loved…but did we ever love rightly?
…
The King is scheduled to join them in Algiers, but Small Lady has a fever and - true to pampered form - bawls incessantly at any healer but her father. A softhearted Queen sends Jadeite instead, leaving Endymion captive by his daughter's bedside. She's going to eat Mamoru alive, Mars thinks wryly of the precocious little girl. And of course, this isn't the first time an "illness" has kept either Endymion or Serenity from events of state. It's probably for the best, though, because this is a modest occasion, not really meriting the King's presence, and the city's situation is still too precarious for her comfort. In fact, Mars is certain that Jadeite himself told Endymion to stay back for this very reason.
They haven't spoken since their fight in the arena, and neither knows how to start now, so she and the illusionist (already masked as his King) make themselves the busiest of all, going over speeches, speaking with local staffers. The Senshi and Shitennou have been dispatched to Algiers to cut the inaugural ribbon for Batal Memorial Hospital, built to house and honor victims of the city's recent and grisly struggle. As royal physician and high priestess, respectively, Mercury and Mars lend credibility and solemnity to the proceedings. Kunzite joins them, so that the people of Algiers may see their own sovereign, and Jadeite, so that they might be honored by an even loftier title. Venus rounds out the quintet, stopping here before another speaking engagement takes her up to London, where she's still popular for her teenage heroics. All in all, it's an unneeded number of royals for so small a function, and Mars wishes she could be back in Crystal Tokyo, where their best men are hunting more of those Colombian sons of bitches who raised so much hell here in Algiers.
Although much of Algiers is rubble, slow to recover from the Great Freeze and recently, successive bomb blasts - Mars can see why it was once called La Blanche, blinding-white spires jutting from the bluest sea she has ever seen. It reminds her of his flashing teeth and eyes, and already she likes the troubled city a bit more because of it. Like him nowadays, it also makes her a little wary, and she covertly surveys the crowd when Kunzite and Jadeite - as Endymion - ascend the stage.
They are a striking pair, like moonlight and shadow, and their audience swiftly falls silent. The one who the Algerians call, rather appropriately, Malik il-Abyad, the White Lord - appears forbidding behind the podium, never fond of his public duty. Mars is glad Venus stands by the steps, her incandescent smiles tossed like pearls, instantly charming all observers.
"Yesterday, we suffered with you in darkness," Jadeite begins, "and today, we rejoice as the dust clears. Today, the White City meets the sun and sea again…today, we celebrate!" The last is a shout. Spectators, mostly men, roar in response, and her companion nudges her. "Sometimes, I think he gets them going better than Mamoru himself," Mercury dimples, a little impishly, and forgetting that things are still bad between her and him, Mars tries to stifle a smile filled with obvious pride. Over the shorter Ice Senshi's head, she sees a staffer with a gun.
The seconds are long.
Mars is already shoving through the crowd, leaping chairs, then pillars. But she still opens her mouth to yell, only to watch Venus's lips compress into a thin, furious line as she sees what Mars sees. Her leader is moving too, a blur of bright light, but neither of them can stop the hail of fire and metal that erupts from the assassin's weapon. Mars knows something about lining up a target, and it is with shock that she realizes the mark is not the false Endymion, but Kunzite, ruler of these lands.
Jadeite realizes it at the same time as she; awareness blooms in his eyes like flowers in water. Knowing him as she does, Mars watches the events unfold before her as though she'd already seen them occur. From where he flanks the podium, Kunzite is blind to the gunman, and can make no move to shield himself. Jadeite rams the taller man out of the way, disguise sifting the rippling atmosphere around him.
Then, a lurid spray of blood and dust onstage - a grenade shines briefly in the sunlight - Venus screams at her, but she can't understand - an arrow like a red star shoots it out of the sky. The bomb roars out its fury, interrupted in its deadly trajectory. Its inferno licks hungrily at nothing but scorching air, and for once, Mars can read nothing in the hellish flames.
Mercury is running to the stage, paler than Mars thought possible, when a cry bursts from somewhere - "Down with Malik il-Abyad! Our king must free our prisoners!" - the petite woman is shoved by another staffer. He, too, holds a gun, and gestures it frantically at the audience. Mercury wraps her fingers around the barrel, unhesitant, and his weapon and hand instantly ice over. The betrayer shrieks in pain, but the Ice Senshi has already vaulted onto the platform and vanished in the spreading smoke.
Venus trusts Mercury to see after the Shitennou's wounds - her tight expression says that she does not want to think about their gravity - and their blonde leader is shouting orders from where she stands, a glinting eye in a maelstrom of panicked, stampeding spectators. The frightened people listen, perhaps more cowed by the colossal Holy Blade now in her hand - formerly a tiny dagger hanging innocuously from her hip-slung chain - than by her ringing commands.
And Mars? Mars has not taken a single step since bullets escaped barrel. She already has the best vantage point, perched as she is atop the tallest pillar on the highest ground. From where the Fire Senshi stands, she can see them flee, pick out the ones with weapons, and her smile is vicious. Mars has been a sniper since long before muskets or machine guns; her arrows always fly truer than sight and swifter than sound. She takes aim, and one by one, they each go down, flames peeling away their clothes and skin, its soft thunder drowning out their screams.
…
By the time Mars descends to ground level, Mercury has completely extinguished her victims. The collaborators are rounded up and put in gurneys - most of them once-trusted local staffers, all of them in agony. Mars hopes that the new hospital is short on supplies, particularly anesthetic and painkiller. They will heal, anyway - her fire burns lesser in body than mind, when she grudgingly commands it so - and she kills youma, not humans. As the betrayers are wheeled away, several aides that traveled with the guardians disperse the milling crowd.
The smoke and dust onstage has mostly cleared - the result of incendiary rounds lodging in the podium. Behind its smoldering ruins, Kunzite cradles the fallen general, whose royal disguise spills like sand from his shuddering form, along with his blood. Mercury attempts to stanch the flow, but it's impossible with tendrils of his failing illusion swarming around her fingers.
"Jadeite." Even almost unconscious, something in Jadeite responds to the authority in his commander's voice; his eyelashes flutter, and Mercury nearly sobs when red trickles from there too. "Jadeite, drop the disguise."
Either he is too weak to sustain it, or he understands Kunzite's order, because a moment later, the man between them slumps, flaxen curls matted against the Middle Eastern ruler's chest. Mercury works over him more efficiently, now that he no longer moves. Venus approaches from behind, attempting to bind Kunzite's own bullet wounds - his shoulder and arm grow darkly red - but he gently shrugs her off, staring intently at Jadeite's slackened features. Mars stands next to the ruined podium. She wants to help, so badly, but she knows all she has in her is to hurt and destroy.
…
Teleporting back to Crystal Tokyo with their two strongest mentalists down is no easy feat, and they are all on the point of collapse when they arrive. There is a collective gasp in the room at the sight of him - hanging limply from Kunzite's good shoulder, so sodden with blood it seems none is left within. Nephrite lets out a hoarse shout; he breaks through the triangle of Mars, Mercury, and Venus and seizes Jadeite just as the Shitennou's leader sways backward, skin as ashen as his once-pristine uniform. Zoisite ducks under his commander's uninjured arm, supporting him, and his wild, dilated eyes meet those of Endymion. The King approaches.
His palm rests on Jadeite's clammy forehead as he is carefully laid out on a stretcher. They all look on, transfixed by their King's flesh drawing tight over his bones, veins cording and flexing in his trembling hand. He grows haggard before them, but nobody dares interrupt, not when they see the barest flush under Jadeite's waxen skin. After a few uncertain moments, Kunzite finally grounds out, "Stop, my King."
The King stumbles back, as drenched with sweat as they all are, breathing erratically. But he still sounds strong, sure. "He's alive. Get him to the infirmary. Kunzite, too. I will not argue," he adds simply, seeing the flash in his guardian's stormy eye. Kunzite stands upright with the last of his strength, and Zoisite backs away as the taller man sweeps out of the room without a backward glance. Venus watches him go, frustration warring with understanding in her expressive features. Behind her, Makoto wordlessly laces her fingers with Venus's, effectively unclenching her leader's bloodless fist. Serenity throws her arms around an unresponsive Mars, wrapping her guardian in a sweet-smelling, tearful death grip. Zoisite chafes Mercury's cold, red-stained hands, reassuring himself that she's unhurt, but it's Nephrite who finally, unsteadily asks. "What the fuck happened?"
…
Jadeite recovers. Slowly. Even with all the science and magic in the world at their disposal, it takes time and effort to rebuild internal organs, replenish thirsty veins. He's more than human, as they all are, but still fortunate to live at all. Zoisite's subsequent shrapnel analysis yields no homemade shell, but an explosive powerful enough to take out the whole of the hospital's makeshift stage. Had Mars failed to bring down the grenade…
It is a poignant reminder - immortality is no fortress that human weapons cannot break.
Rei doesn't spend every waking minute and hour at his bedside - she has duties, hers and his both. She continues to prophesy and pray, to guard and govern the Far East. With the last of the Colombian bosses caught, and their money trail to the Algerian hospital and several other respected institutions traced, Kunzite personally and dispassionately oversees their very prolonged interrogation. Nobody wants to be in the room when he does.
Kunzite probably spends about as much time with Jadeite's sleeping form as she does, and for her part, Rei understands a little of his guilt. She, too, has seen Jadeite suffer for her, but too late to spare him pain.
Their conversation sounds gradually louder as she approaches the door, and her steps speed accordingly. Though his voice is the more muted of the two, Rei hears Jadeite's first: "…thank…King…wasn't there." She reaches the doorway just in time to see Kunzite's nod, and clears her throat. The Shitennou's leader rises, his big hand reassuringly on Jadeite's shoulder as Rei approaches.
"Your fool's finally awakened," he tells her, but there's a lightheartedness she hasn't seen lifting his lips since that day in Algiers, despite his brusque words. As he passes, Rei hears his murmur, meant for her ears alone. "Be good to him."
Rei seats herself by Jadeite's bedside, and before she's even aware of it, her fingers are stroking damp curls from his forehead. "He's right, you know," she informs him without preamble. "You are a fool."
"Your fool," Jadeite corrects her weakly, turning his head slightly to take her in. Despite obvious pain and fatigue, his scrutiny is direct and fearless as always.
Rei ignores both him and the pressure building behind her eyelids - only he sees her weep, and only he is the cause. She blinks and goes on as though he's said nothing. "No point in dressing up as the King if you're just going to take bullets for your guard."
"He's my commander. You'd have done the same." He is infuriatingly - and invariably - right.
"I wouldn't have gotten myself riddled with holes in the process."
"No, you were the one riddling our attackers with holes," Jadeite notes wryly. "And stopping bombs midair, I hear." As often, the levity in his tone does not match the somberness in his eyes. Her lover's trembling hand brushes her chin. "You saved me."
Rei seizes his palm and crushes it to her lips. "No. I hurt you," the admission quivers wetly against his paper-dry skin, and they both know she's not talking about Algiers. The frailty of his fingers, once so strong and tanned against her cheek, nearly splinters her. She has to hold this eggshelled, breakable thing together, has to say this to him in one piece. "Will - will you forgive me?"
"What does your Fire tell you of my forgiveness?" his voice is gentler than Rei wants it to be, and she wishes he shouted at her more.
"The Fire knows nothing of you, save your permanence." It emerges irritably, not tearfully, and Rei is grateful for small victories.
Jadeite's abrupt chuckle startles her as much as it injures him; Rei smoothes beads of sweat from his brow as the general winces. But no red mottles the bandages crisscrossing his torso, and after a moment, he smiles painfully. "It's not the first time I've outwitted it. But what little it knows of me is true."
His hand on her face finds strength, and in it, Rei finds forgiveness. She recognizes the feel of it; they have always had so much to forgive each other for. "I will always be here, Rei."
"Always," she echoes blandly, keeping her relief from sounding out loud. Rei reaches out, trails Jadeite's wounds beneath the cloth with her fingertips, willing her touch to heal while knowing it holds no such power. "An eternity - to torment me with 'surprises' like this."
"Yes," the golden general agrees simply, amusedly, and draws her close.
…
In the peaceful minutes that follow, Rei rests her black head by his blond one, and sighs idly as he laces their fingers together. Against all odds, his warm neck smells of musk and not sanitizer, and she briefly imagines that they lie in their own bed, curled into dappled sunlight, before their day takes them.
"Your ring," Jadeite comments, and she shifts beside him. Her lover traces her bare ring finger lazily, up and down. "Did it break in the - in Algiers?"
Rei takes a deep breath, realizing her brief triumph over her tears is soon to be reversed. "No," she speaks softly against his stubbled jawbone, tiny golden bristles pleasantly scratching her paler skin. Her lips gradually inch near Jadeite's own, as he turns his head to face her. "It broke when my vow did."
"Your vow," Jadeite repeats uncertainly, pulling back and searching her expression. For once, Rei takes pleasure in arranging her features into an unreadable mask, in mystifying the magician himself. She does not have his talent for deception, though, and her eyes betray her.
"My vow. To take no master but the Fire." Rei pauses, watches his lips tighten slightly, and braces herself. "You're not my master, and if you know me at all, then you know you never will be." There's a giggle in her voice, born of mild hysteria, and she rushes on. "But you - you've always ruled my past. My future. For as long as I can remember."
Jadeite's entire face is literally agape with disbelief, and if she didn't feel somewhat like vomiting herself, Rei might have laughed. But instead, she finds herself sobbing when she asks.
"Will - will you replace my ring - " Jadeite's fingers crush around hers " - with - with another?"
Rei couldn't look away from the twin blue flames trained on her if the whole infirmary crashed to dust around them. They're the only thing she can see, haloed brightly in a blurred windowpane of tears.
His voice is unusually rough when he finds it. "I will not replace your ring when your customs do not demand it, miko." She stares at him, not understanding.
"I am sovereign of your homeland, after all, and I think I know something of your old beliefs." Jadeite's lined, peaked countenance softens. "But I will replace your vow instead. If you will let me."
There's only one answer, one Rei's borne deep within herself since the Oracle first laid her burning eyes on the king of illusions, and found someone worthy of eternity. Some things take even a seer too long to see, but she finally recognizes it in Jadeite's fevered, exultantly clear-sky gaze - satisfaction of his long-undisclosed desire.
…
Minako can't resist a few jibes at the expense of her dearest sister - exquisitely composed on the outside, and clearly a mess internally. She says it for the thousandth time. "You may have been the Oracle, Rei, but I think I know what I'm talking about here. Everything will be fine."
Rei could have the best of hairdressers and makeup artists, but this once, she refuses to stand on formality, and so the blonde skillfully applies white paint to the bride's already pale skin and dots brilliantly scarlet lacquer to her lips. "You're lovelier than I ever will be," the erstwhile Aphrodite tells her, and today, Rei might believe it, but she's still terrified. Makoto coils her inky tresses into submission, and between humming and industrious pinning, she covertly passes a flask down and tells Rei to drink up. "Half the ceremony is drinking, anyway," the redhead reasons, and Rei can see the logic in that, but she only manages a few sips before a scandalized Ami steals it away. "Save it for the wedding night, Rei," the petite woman advises, utterly deadpan, and they all dissolve into giggles as Ami calmly secures Rei's heavy obi. Outside the dressing room, Serenity demands entry, and then belatedly knocks. "I'm bringing in a boy!" their Queen hollers graciously, and Zoisite strolls in on her heels, lips permanently quirked for mischief.
"You know as well as I do, how briefly these bloom," he tells Rei, proffering a carved box. Ami opens it and deftly slips the finely gilded cherry blossoms into her friend's sculpted mass of hair. Rei waits, with retort ready for some pronouncement of bizarre wisdom, but Ami's amateur philosopher keeps it unusually pithy. "Life's shorter than we think. Next time, don't wait for him to get blown up before you make up." With that, Zoisite steals the last hairpin, tucks it behind Rei's ear, and leaves whistling insouciantly. The dressing room degenerates into general chaos until the Queen speaks.
"I have something for you too, Rei," and the room hushes immediately at her unaccustomed solemnity. In Serenity's overburdened arms, there is a mass of white fabric, almost bigger than the dainty woman herself. "I've heard a happy bride's veil is the best luck you can give…but I know you aren't wearing one…so…" She lets the bundle unroll, and all of the Senshi gasp. Serenity's wedding veil has been meticulously embroidered upon the heavy white satin of Rei's uchikake, beaded firebirds alighting upon latticed flowers and vines.
A beat, then Rei blurts it out first. "Usagi, I - what the hell were you thinking?" Makoto hastily takes the wedding robe from her Queen, before she topples with its weight. "This is your wedding veil - are you fu - "
"I already wore it on the happiest day of my life," Serenity interrupts with a stomp of her royal foot. "Why do I need it anymore? Shut up and put it on!" Rei blinks at her petulance, bemused, and Serenity takes the opportunity to step forward and embrace her. "I waited for you because of all of us…you'll treasure it the most," her Queen whispers knowingly against her cheek.
"Is she ready?" Nephrite booms unceremoniously from the hallway, and his wife opens her mouth.
"Yes," Rei answers for Makoto. "I am."
The Shitennou's commander falls into step beside her as she awkwardly adjusts her wataboshi. Being nearly two heads (and shoulders) taller, he simply straightens the voluminous headdress for her without asking. They walk.
"Thank you," Kunzite tells Rei.
"For what?"
"For saving me, that day." He cuts cleanly across whatever Rei means to say. "For saving him, now."
Ahead of them, Nephrite snorts. "From what - being a bachelor? How about you save him from being sniper fodder? Teach him the art of throwing fireballs, or something fucking useful, instead of being tricky assassin bait?"
"How about you stand still and play bullseye?" Rei tosses back at him, and Nephrite shakes his head, still chuckling.
The King greets them at the door. "They're both inside."
"No harsh words for Helios officiating this ceremony, I see," Rei says pointedly.
"Mm. No fear of Helios stealing you away," Endymion responds smoothly. "Or harsh words, for that matter. You're Jadeite's problem, not mine."
"You'll regret that in a few hundred years, when your daughter marries someone like me instead of a saintly Elysian priest." Jadeite emerges from the shrine, resplendent in his emblazoned haori. The dynastic dragon spreads its protective wings between his shoulderblades, mimicking the tattooed skin beneath. Rei appreciatively observes the ripple of black silk over his leonine musculature, perhaps too appreciatively, and Serenity pokes both Makoto and Ami indelicately as they all approach. Minako doesn't bother with stealthy measures. "You're supposed to be a shy new wife, Rei. Spare poor Helios the eyefucking." The latter makes his way from inside the shrine as well, ears red, and Rei wonders how much he heard. As Makoto and Minako snicker softly, Jadeite's eyes deliberately lock with Rei's, sea meets sunset, and as far as she's concerned, the ceremony has already begun.
Helios, quietly authoritative despite his youth, blesses and purifies the Far Eastern king and his bride. As Jadeite passes their first cup of sake to her, Rei reminisces over her first existence, of the oath she left, and the man who left her. She'd learned then, to never give herself easily. That if anything was worth holding onto, it would survive her purging fire. Nothing did, and her self-destruction left her bereft.
She remembers her past as a miko, and smiles at Phobos and Deimos, resplendent in red and white, as they pour the second cup. Jadeite sips slowly, and Rei searches his aspect for signs of the creature he was then. The memories have singed and softened at the edges, but Rei recalls how hard it was to forgive when she was a girl, when her soulmate from the Fire came to her as demon instead of man.
Waiting for the final cup makes her impatient, and she knows a bit of the restlessness and ennui that plagued her in this third life. Rei knows, too, of his quicksilver heart, his endless capacity for the unpredictable. She suspects a millennia's worth of surprises, but she's content not knowing.
With Rei's last mouthful of sake, she prays she has learned the right lessons. Their friends and family come around them, and she catches Jadeite's flashing, triumphant glance just before he makes the vow to her that he's wanted for so long. Rei once again sees the Fire's blue heart in his eyes, burning away the millennia between them.
This time, she thinks, with all the world before them like the draught they have shared - this time, they will love rightly.
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Panchali
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Rei had expected to feel shame and regret where her sister Senshi and Queen were concerned, but instead she feels only relief. Her longing - no more than an insubstantial thought, one that she had not borne out to completion. Once Jadeite gave her wish substance, confronted her with his flesh-and-blood answer to her curiosity, she'd found it fled, replaced by an overwhelming desire for his familiar touch. And he was right all along - it had really never been about some secret ardor for her King and his guardians. They had merely given powerful voice to Rei's craving for the unexpected, for the forked path, for choices equal to her stature. There is nothing in these other men to attract her, as great as they are. She knows now that she is not in danger of betraying her sisters or her lover.
He was right. But of course, Jadeite always had surprised her.
Jadeite had heard her unspoken need, pushed her to speak it, made it his own and delivered it. He had been the architect, but she had been the dreamer, and neither of them had thought through the consequences of creating her fantasy.
If Rei now feels shame or regret, it is for letting her lover pain himself so deeply to please her, for infecting him with her own insidious restlessness. Maybe her temptation had been truly wrong, maybe it had only been natural, maybe both - but should they have manipulated his magic to bring it to vigorous life? Tested their limits, only to lick their wounds when they inevitably crossed them? Rei does not know if his doubts surfaced before their strange night together - she doesn't think Jadeite capable of hiding his feelings from her so effectively, but then, he is the master of disguises - or if he'd only suffered in the harsh morning light, after everything that had passed between them. It doesn't matter; she was and is the cause.
…
Makoto ushers her into her living room without a word, taking Rei's hand in her own warm one and leading her to an overstuffed loveseat. The familiar smells of peppery olive oil and dried roses comfort her, allow her to take small sips of the chardonnay Makoto offers. It tastes like dishwater to Rei, and the redhead watches her closely. But she patiently waits for her friend to speak first, a consideration for which Rei is grateful, and probably has never offered anyone herself. It is why she comes to Makoto, and not any of the others.
She cannot tell Minako, her closest sister. Rei doesn't want the counsel of one nearly as impatient and headstrong as herself, for whom the Shitennou's commander holds such gripping mesmerism, the violent push and pull of magnet to metal. Nor does Rei desire Ami's advice; she suspects the Ice Senshi is as vulnerable to logical hesitation as she is to her own spiritual dubiety, though their insecurities manifest themselves differently. Despite - perhaps, because of - their newfound happiness, neither the mythical guardians of love nor wisdom have really gotten used to finding equals to share their lives with, where they had expected eternal solitude. Usagi? No, love has always come easily to her optimistic Queen, in every life, she thinks fondly, and Rei would not wish it any other way. All the same, it means that Usagi could never understand.
And so, she seeks out someone who has awaited and received love patiently, unwaveringly, in a way that Rei can't seem to manage herself, despite millennia spent trying. Makoto never had doubts; she welcomed her beloved from ages past without indecision or interruption. If anyone could teach Rei steadfastness, it is the Senshi as enduring as the forest whose name she bears.
"I think you need something stronger," Makoto's unasked question gradually filters through her reverie. Her hostess fetches her a vodka on the rocks, and loosens her reticent friend's tongue.
Rei tells her. Not everything, of course - just that she and Jadeite had gotten caught up in her trivial fantasy, taken a harmless erotic charade too far. Not that she had looked into her King's midnight gaze and longed for midday sky - only that nothing had been the same between them since she'd introduced unnamed others into their bed.
She's not shy in the least about sex - many years and many stiff drinks with her fellow Senshi have cured even Ami (well, almost) of coyness - but Rei is glad she's sharing with Makoto, and not Minako or Usagi, both of whom might have been so spoiled for choice of which giggling innuendo to drop that they'd devolve into total incoherence. Even Makoto can't resist, a wicked spark to her bottle-glass irises as she tries to imagine just whose body Jadeite might have inhabited that night, other than the Fire Senshi's, of course.
"Kinky. I'm almost jealous. The stars knowing everything…" she shrugs dismissively. "Not many bedroom perks to that, I'm afraid."
"Knowing everything. I wouldn't wish that cross on anyone else."
Makoto sobers immediately. "I know you've felt…trapped…sometimes…"
"Not by him - never." Rei edgily twists her signet ring round her finger. The seal of Mars has represented the same vow in all of her incarnations - her promise to her sacred flames, to take no other master. "And anyway, the only thing the Fire's ever really known about him is the easiest - that he'd come. I just wanted - I don't know. Something out of the ordinary. Something I couldn't predict."
"Neph says the same thing," Makoto muses, smiling in apparent spite of her friend's predicament. "That divining the stars makes him restless."
Rei snorts inelegantly. "No, he says you're the only thing he's sure of, because the stars never know what batshit thing you'll do next."
Makoto turns that forested, knowing look on her, and Rei meets it squarely. "Don't say it. I know it now," and her words sound quietly in a quiet room. "That no Fire or stars can tell us anything about people we love. They'll always surprise us, no matter how well we know the future. No matter how well we know them. But I never really pictured being happy with someone, forever - I took oaths to escape marriage, not enter it."
"But you still took Jade for a lover, even when your duty demanded chastity. And now you push him away, too? Where is this road going to lead you?"
Rei stops short of replying, because it sounds so stark coming from her friend, but it's true. She's never given herself wholly to anyone or anything. What kind of sickness makes her wander forever, without a home?
She tries for nonchalance, but acid burns through instead, a caustic drip of conjecture. "I always saw him coming, but I never saw myself coping. Maybe that's why it's ending like this - maybe that's why I command flames, Mako. Because everything I hold onto - everything I touch turns to ashes."
"No," Makoto's voice is almost too gentle. "That's not how it works, Rei. You see things we don't, but the Fire only purges lies, disguises, deceptions. You, of all people, should know what the king of illusions wants."
"In the end, I only wanted him, too," Rei murmurs in sudden understanding. "Just him."
"You have to give something to get something."
"I've never known how to do that," she points out the obvious, dryly.
"Then learn." The tallest Senshi picks up their empty glasses. "I'm no Oracle, but there's no future for you both - if you can't learn to give more, and he can't learn to give less."
…
Jadeite had never been a hot-tempered or possessive man - but then, she had never given him cause. Now, Rei can see that he fears losing her - not really to any of his brothers, he's too arrogant for that particular insecurity - but to something more spectral. To a need for change and chance that he believes he can never satisfy, not with the steadiness of immortality stretching before them. If Rei was not so distraught, she would laugh at the irony of his misgivings - the famously unwed priestess, restless for amorous adventure, and the inveterate playboy of the Silver Millennium, seeking her hand above all others. But she cannot laugh, because she no longer wants anything more than to give Jadeite her hand. If the Fire had never spoken to her, and she'd had the freedom to decide, she would have chosen him. Forever. And now Rei fears that he does not trust her love, that he will not accept it - just when she understands herself able to unreservedly give it.
This is what it should be, and it took me three lifetimes to learn it, Rei thinks wonderingly. We loved…but did we ever love rightly?
…
The King is scheduled to join them in Algiers, but Small Lady has a fever and - true to pampered form - bawls incessantly at any healer but her father. A softhearted Queen sends Jadeite instead, leaving Endymion captive by his daughter's bedside. She's going to eat Mamoru alive, Mars thinks wryly of the precocious little girl. And of course, this isn't the first time an "illness" has kept either Endymion or Serenity from events of state. It's probably for the best, though, because this is a modest occasion, not really meriting the King's presence, and the city's situation is still too precarious for her comfort. In fact, Mars is certain that Jadeite himself told Endymion to stay back for this very reason.
They haven't spoken since their fight in the arena, and neither knows how to start now, so she and the illusionist (already masked as his King) make themselves the busiest of all, going over speeches, speaking with local staffers. The Senshi and Shitennou have been dispatched to Algiers to cut the inaugural ribbon for Batal Memorial Hospital, built to house and honor victims of the city's recent and grisly struggle. As royal physician and high priestess, respectively, Mercury and Mars lend credibility and solemnity to the proceedings. Kunzite joins them, so that the people of Algiers may see their own sovereign, and Jadeite, so that they might be honored by an even loftier title. Venus rounds out the quintet, stopping here before another speaking engagement takes her up to London, where she's still popular for her teenage heroics. All in all, it's an unneeded number of royals for so small a function, and Mars wishes she could be back in Crystal Tokyo, where their best men are hunting more of those Colombian sons of bitches who raised so much hell here in Algiers.
Although much of Algiers is rubble, slow to recover from the Great Freeze and recently, successive bomb blasts - Mars can see why it was once called La Blanche, blinding-white spires jutting from the bluest sea she has ever seen. It reminds her of his flashing teeth and eyes, and already she likes the troubled city a bit more because of it. Like him nowadays, it also makes her a little wary, and she covertly surveys the crowd when Kunzite and Jadeite - as Endymion - ascend the stage.
They are a striking pair, like moonlight and shadow, and their audience swiftly falls silent. The one who the Algerians call, rather appropriately, Malik il-Abyad, the White Lord - appears forbidding behind the podium, never fond of his public duty. Mars is glad Venus stands by the steps, her incandescent smiles tossed like pearls, instantly charming all observers.
"Yesterday, we suffered with you in darkness," Jadeite begins, "and today, we rejoice as the dust clears. Today, the White City meets the sun and sea again…today, we celebrate!" The last is a shout. Spectators, mostly men, roar in response, and her companion nudges her. "Sometimes, I think he gets them going better than Mamoru himself," Mercury dimples, a little impishly, and forgetting that things are still bad between her and him, Mars tries to stifle a smile filled with obvious pride. Over the shorter Ice Senshi's head, she sees a staffer with a gun.
The seconds are long.
Mars is already shoving through the crowd, leaping chairs, then pillars. But she still opens her mouth to yell, only to watch Venus's lips compress into a thin, furious line as she sees what Mars sees. Her leader is moving too, a blur of bright light, but neither of them can stop the hail of fire and metal that erupts from the assassin's weapon. Mars knows something about lining up a target, and it is with shock that she realizes the mark is not the false Endymion, but Kunzite, ruler of these lands.
Jadeite realizes it at the same time as she; awareness blooms in his eyes like flowers in water. Knowing him as she does, Mars watches the events unfold before her as though she'd already seen them occur. From where he flanks the podium, Kunzite is blind to the gunman, and can make no move to shield himself. Jadeite rams the taller man out of the way, disguise sifting the rippling atmosphere around him.
Then, a lurid spray of blood and dust onstage - a grenade shines briefly in the sunlight - Venus screams at her, but she can't understand - an arrow like a red star shoots it out of the sky. The bomb roars out its fury, interrupted in its deadly trajectory. Its inferno licks hungrily at nothing but scorching air, and for once, Mars can read nothing in the hellish flames.
Mercury is running to the stage, paler than Mars thought possible, when a cry bursts from somewhere - "Down with Malik il-Abyad! Our king must free our prisoners!" - the petite woman is shoved by another staffer. He, too, holds a gun, and gestures it frantically at the audience. Mercury wraps her fingers around the barrel, unhesitant, and his weapon and hand instantly ice over. The betrayer shrieks in pain, but the Ice Senshi has already vaulted onto the platform and vanished in the spreading smoke.
Venus trusts Mercury to see after the Shitennou's wounds - her tight expression says that she does not want to think about their gravity - and their blonde leader is shouting orders from where she stands, a glinting eye in a maelstrom of panicked, stampeding spectators. The frightened people listen, perhaps more cowed by the colossal Holy Blade now in her hand - formerly a tiny dagger hanging innocuously from her hip-slung chain - than by her ringing commands.
And Mars? Mars has not taken a single step since bullets escaped barrel. She already has the best vantage point, perched as she is atop the tallest pillar on the highest ground. From where the Fire Senshi stands, she can see them flee, pick out the ones with weapons, and her smile is vicious. Mars has been a sniper since long before muskets or machine guns; her arrows always fly truer than sight and swifter than sound. She takes aim, and one by one, they each go down, flames peeling away their clothes and skin, its soft thunder drowning out their screams.
…
By the time Mars descends to ground level, Mercury has completely extinguished her victims. The collaborators are rounded up and put in gurneys - most of them once-trusted local staffers, all of them in agony. Mars hopes that the new hospital is short on supplies, particularly anesthetic and painkiller. They will heal, anyway - her fire burns lesser in body than mind, when she grudgingly commands it so - and she kills youma, not humans. As the betrayers are wheeled away, several aides that traveled with the guardians disperse the milling crowd.
The smoke and dust onstage has mostly cleared - the result of incendiary rounds lodging in the podium. Behind its smoldering ruins, Kunzite cradles the fallen general, whose royal disguise spills like sand from his shuddering form, along with his blood. Mercury attempts to stanch the flow, but it's impossible with tendrils of his failing illusion swarming around her fingers.
"Jadeite." Even almost unconscious, something in Jadeite responds to the authority in his commander's voice; his eyelashes flutter, and Mercury nearly sobs when red trickles from there too. "Jadeite, drop the disguise."
Either he is too weak to sustain it, or he understands Kunzite's order, because a moment later, the man between them slumps, flaxen curls matted against the Middle Eastern ruler's chest. Mercury works over him more efficiently, now that he no longer moves. Venus approaches from behind, attempting to bind Kunzite's own bullet wounds - his shoulder and arm grow darkly red - but he gently shrugs her off, staring intently at Jadeite's slackened features. Mars stands next to the ruined podium. She wants to help, so badly, but she knows all she has in her is to hurt and destroy.
…
Teleporting back to Crystal Tokyo with their two strongest mentalists down is no easy feat, and they are all on the point of collapse when they arrive. There is a collective gasp in the room at the sight of him - hanging limply from Kunzite's good shoulder, so sodden with blood it seems none is left within. Nephrite lets out a hoarse shout; he breaks through the triangle of Mars, Mercury, and Venus and seizes Jadeite just as the Shitennou's leader sways backward, skin as ashen as his once-pristine uniform. Zoisite ducks under his commander's uninjured arm, supporting him, and his wild, dilated eyes meet those of Endymion. The King approaches.
His palm rests on Jadeite's clammy forehead as he is carefully laid out on a stretcher. They all look on, transfixed by their King's flesh drawing tight over his bones, veins cording and flexing in his trembling hand. He grows haggard before them, but nobody dares interrupt, not when they see the barest flush under Jadeite's waxen skin. After a few uncertain moments, Kunzite finally grounds out, "Stop, my King."
The King stumbles back, as drenched with sweat as they all are, breathing erratically. But he still sounds strong, sure. "He's alive. Get him to the infirmary. Kunzite, too. I will not argue," he adds simply, seeing the flash in his guardian's stormy eye. Kunzite stands upright with the last of his strength, and Zoisite backs away as the taller man sweeps out of the room without a backward glance. Venus watches him go, frustration warring with understanding in her expressive features. Behind her, Makoto wordlessly laces her fingers with Venus's, effectively unclenching her leader's bloodless fist. Serenity throws her arms around an unresponsive Mars, wrapping her guardian in a sweet-smelling, tearful death grip. Zoisite chafes Mercury's cold, red-stained hands, reassuring himself that she's unhurt, but it's Nephrite who finally, unsteadily asks. "What the fuck happened?"
…
Jadeite recovers. Slowly. Even with all the science and magic in the world at their disposal, it takes time and effort to rebuild internal organs, replenish thirsty veins. He's more than human, as they all are, but still fortunate to live at all. Zoisite's subsequent shrapnel analysis yields no homemade shell, but an explosive powerful enough to take out the whole of the hospital's makeshift stage. Had Mars failed to bring down the grenade…
It is a poignant reminder - immortality is no fortress that human weapons cannot break.
Rei doesn't spend every waking minute and hour at his bedside - she has duties, hers and his both. She continues to prophesy and pray, to guard and govern the Far East. With the last of the Colombian bosses caught, and their money trail to the Algerian hospital and several other respected institutions traced, Kunzite personally and dispassionately oversees their very prolonged interrogation. Nobody wants to be in the room when he does.
Kunzite probably spends about as much time with Jadeite's sleeping form as she does, and for her part, Rei understands a little of his guilt. She, too, has seen Jadeite suffer for her, but too late to spare him pain.
Their conversation sounds gradually louder as she approaches the door, and her steps speed accordingly. Though his voice is the more muted of the two, Rei hears Jadeite's first: "…thank…King…wasn't there." She reaches the doorway just in time to see Kunzite's nod, and clears her throat. The Shitennou's leader rises, his big hand reassuringly on Jadeite's shoulder as Rei approaches.
"Your fool's finally awakened," he tells her, but there's a lightheartedness she hasn't seen lifting his lips since that day in Algiers, despite his brusque words. As he passes, Rei hears his murmur, meant for her ears alone. "Be good to him."
Rei seats herself by Jadeite's bedside, and before she's even aware of it, her fingers are stroking damp curls from his forehead. "He's right, you know," she informs him without preamble. "You are a fool."
"Your fool," Jadeite corrects her weakly, turning his head slightly to take her in. Despite obvious pain and fatigue, his scrutiny is direct and fearless as always.
Rei ignores both him and the pressure building behind her eyelids - only he sees her weep, and only he is the cause. She blinks and goes on as though he's said nothing. "No point in dressing up as the King if you're just going to take bullets for your guard."
"He's my commander. You'd have done the same." He is infuriatingly - and invariably - right.
"I wouldn't have gotten myself riddled with holes in the process."
"No, you were the one riddling our attackers with holes," Jadeite notes wryly. "And stopping bombs midair, I hear." As often, the levity in his tone does not match the somberness in his eyes. Her lover's trembling hand brushes her chin. "You saved me."
Rei seizes his palm and crushes it to her lips. "No. I hurt you," the admission quivers wetly against his paper-dry skin, and they both know she's not talking about Algiers. The frailty of his fingers, once so strong and tanned against her cheek, nearly splinters her. She has to hold this eggshelled, breakable thing together, has to say this to him in one piece. "Will - will you forgive me?"
"What does your Fire tell you of my forgiveness?" his voice is gentler than Rei wants it to be, and she wishes he shouted at her more.
"The Fire knows nothing of you, save your permanence." It emerges irritably, not tearfully, and Rei is grateful for small victories.
Jadeite's abrupt chuckle startles her as much as it injures him; Rei smoothes beads of sweat from his brow as the general winces. But no red mottles the bandages crisscrossing his torso, and after a moment, he smiles painfully. "It's not the first time I've outwitted it. But what little it knows of me is true."
His hand on her face finds strength, and in it, Rei finds forgiveness. She recognizes the feel of it; they have always had so much to forgive each other for. "I will always be here, Rei."
"Always," she echoes blandly, keeping her relief from sounding out loud. Rei reaches out, trails Jadeite's wounds beneath the cloth with her fingertips, willing her touch to heal while knowing it holds no such power. "An eternity - to torment me with 'surprises' like this."
"Yes," the golden general agrees simply, amusedly, and draws her close.
…
In the peaceful minutes that follow, Rei rests her black head by his blond one, and sighs idly as he laces their fingers together. Against all odds, his warm neck smells of musk and not sanitizer, and she briefly imagines that they lie in their own bed, curled into dappled sunlight, before their day takes them.
"Your ring," Jadeite comments, and she shifts beside him. Her lover traces her bare ring finger lazily, up and down. "Did it break in the - in Algiers?"
Rei takes a deep breath, realizing her brief triumph over her tears is soon to be reversed. "No," she speaks softly against his stubbled jawbone, tiny golden bristles pleasantly scratching her paler skin. Her lips gradually inch near Jadeite's own, as he turns his head to face her. "It broke when my vow did."
"Your vow," Jadeite repeats uncertainly, pulling back and searching her expression. For once, Rei takes pleasure in arranging her features into an unreadable mask, in mystifying the magician himself. She does not have his talent for deception, though, and her eyes betray her.
"My vow. To take no master but the Fire." Rei pauses, watches his lips tighten slightly, and braces herself. "You're not my master, and if you know me at all, then you know you never will be." There's a giggle in her voice, born of mild hysteria, and she rushes on. "But you - you've always ruled my past. My future. For as long as I can remember."
Jadeite's entire face is literally agape with disbelief, and if she didn't feel somewhat like vomiting herself, Rei might have laughed. But instead, she finds herself sobbing when she asks.
"Will - will you replace my ring - " Jadeite's fingers crush around hers " - with - with another?"
Rei couldn't look away from the twin blue flames trained on her if the whole infirmary crashed to dust around them. They're the only thing she can see, haloed brightly in a blurred windowpane of tears.
His voice is unusually rough when he finds it. "I will not replace your ring when your customs do not demand it, miko." She stares at him, not understanding.
"I am sovereign of your homeland, after all, and I think I know something of your old beliefs." Jadeite's lined, peaked countenance softens. "But I will replace your vow instead. If you will let me."
There's only one answer, one Rei's borne deep within herself since the Oracle first laid her burning eyes on the king of illusions, and found someone worthy of eternity. Some things take even a seer too long to see, but she finally recognizes it in Jadeite's fevered, exultantly clear-sky gaze - satisfaction of his long-undisclosed desire.
…
Minako can't resist a few jibes at the expense of her dearest sister - exquisitely composed on the outside, and clearly a mess internally. She says it for the thousandth time. "You may have been the Oracle, Rei, but I think I know what I'm talking about here. Everything will be fine."
Rei could have the best of hairdressers and makeup artists, but this once, she refuses to stand on formality, and so the blonde skillfully applies white paint to the bride's already pale skin and dots brilliantly scarlet lacquer to her lips. "You're lovelier than I ever will be," the erstwhile Aphrodite tells her, and today, Rei might believe it, but she's still terrified. Makoto coils her inky tresses into submission, and between humming and industrious pinning, she covertly passes a flask down and tells Rei to drink up. "Half the ceremony is drinking, anyway," the redhead reasons, and Rei can see the logic in that, but she only manages a few sips before a scandalized Ami steals it away. "Save it for the wedding night, Rei," the petite woman advises, utterly deadpan, and they all dissolve into giggles as Ami calmly secures Rei's heavy obi. Outside the dressing room, Serenity demands entry, and then belatedly knocks. "I'm bringing in a boy!" their Queen hollers graciously, and Zoisite strolls in on her heels, lips permanently quirked for mischief.
"You know as well as I do, how briefly these bloom," he tells Rei, proffering a carved box. Ami opens it and deftly slips the finely gilded cherry blossoms into her friend's sculpted mass of hair. Rei waits, with retort ready for some pronouncement of bizarre wisdom, but Ami's amateur philosopher keeps it unusually pithy. "Life's shorter than we think. Next time, don't wait for him to get blown up before you make up." With that, Zoisite steals the last hairpin, tucks it behind Rei's ear, and leaves whistling insouciantly. The dressing room degenerates into general chaos until the Queen speaks.
"I have something for you too, Rei," and the room hushes immediately at her unaccustomed solemnity. In Serenity's overburdened arms, there is a mass of white fabric, almost bigger than the dainty woman herself. "I've heard a happy bride's veil is the best luck you can give…but I know you aren't wearing one…so…" She lets the bundle unroll, and all of the Senshi gasp. Serenity's wedding veil has been meticulously embroidered upon the heavy white satin of Rei's uchikake, beaded firebirds alighting upon latticed flowers and vines.
A beat, then Rei blurts it out first. "Usagi, I - what the hell were you thinking?" Makoto hastily takes the wedding robe from her Queen, before she topples with its weight. "This is your wedding veil - are you fu - "
"I already wore it on the happiest day of my life," Serenity interrupts with a stomp of her royal foot. "Why do I need it anymore? Shut up and put it on!" Rei blinks at her petulance, bemused, and Serenity takes the opportunity to step forward and embrace her. "I waited for you because of all of us…you'll treasure it the most," her Queen whispers knowingly against her cheek.
"Is she ready?" Nephrite booms unceremoniously from the hallway, and his wife opens her mouth.
"Yes," Rei answers for Makoto. "I am."
The Shitennou's commander falls into step beside her as she awkwardly adjusts her wataboshi. Being nearly two heads (and shoulders) taller, he simply straightens the voluminous headdress for her without asking. They walk.
"Thank you," Kunzite tells Rei.
"For what?"
"For saving me, that day." He cuts cleanly across whatever Rei means to say. "For saving him, now."
Ahead of them, Nephrite snorts. "From what - being a bachelor? How about you save him from being sniper fodder? Teach him the art of throwing fireballs, or something fucking useful, instead of being tricky assassin bait?"
"How about you stand still and play bullseye?" Rei tosses back at him, and Nephrite shakes his head, still chuckling.
The King greets them at the door. "They're both inside."
"No harsh words for Helios officiating this ceremony, I see," Rei says pointedly.
"Mm. No fear of Helios stealing you away," Endymion responds smoothly. "Or harsh words, for that matter. You're Jadeite's problem, not mine."
"You'll regret that in a few hundred years, when your daughter marries someone like me instead of a saintly Elysian priest." Jadeite emerges from the shrine, resplendent in his emblazoned haori. The dynastic dragon spreads its protective wings between his shoulderblades, mimicking the tattooed skin beneath. Rei appreciatively observes the ripple of black silk over his leonine musculature, perhaps too appreciatively, and Serenity pokes both Makoto and Ami indelicately as they all approach. Minako doesn't bother with stealthy measures. "You're supposed to be a shy new wife, Rei. Spare poor Helios the eyefucking." The latter makes his way from inside the shrine as well, ears red, and Rei wonders how much he heard. As Makoto and Minako snicker softly, Jadeite's eyes deliberately lock with Rei's, sea meets sunset, and as far as she's concerned, the ceremony has already begun.
Helios, quietly authoritative despite his youth, blesses and purifies the Far Eastern king and his bride. As Jadeite passes their first cup of sake to her, Rei reminisces over her first existence, of the oath she left, and the man who left her. She'd learned then, to never give herself easily. That if anything was worth holding onto, it would survive her purging fire. Nothing did, and her self-destruction left her bereft.
She remembers her past as a miko, and smiles at Phobos and Deimos, resplendent in red and white, as they pour the second cup. Jadeite sips slowly, and Rei searches his aspect for signs of the creature he was then. The memories have singed and softened at the edges, but Rei recalls how hard it was to forgive when she was a girl, when her soulmate from the Fire came to her as demon instead of man.
Waiting for the final cup makes her impatient, and she knows a bit of the restlessness and ennui that plagued her in this third life. Rei knows, too, of his quicksilver heart, his endless capacity for the unpredictable. She suspects a millennia's worth of surprises, but she's content not knowing.
With Rei's last mouthful of sake, she prays she has learned the right lessons. Their friends and family come around them, and she catches Jadeite's flashing, triumphant glance just before he makes the vow to her that he's wanted for so long. Rei once again sees the Fire's blue heart in his eyes, burning away the millennia between them.
This time, she thinks, with all the world before them like the draught they have shared - this time, they will love rightly.
…
…
…
…
…